The Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce will host their first Wake Up! meeting of 2019 on Thursday in the friend’s room in the library. Breakfast and networking start at 7:15 a.m. and the program runs from 7:45 a.m. until 8:30 a.m. The free, public event will feature guest speaker Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Grayson, commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines.

The city of Newport Beach “adopted” the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines (1/1) in December 2003, and created the Newport Beach 1st Battalion, 1st Marines Foundation.

As officials describe the battalion on the city website, the 1/1 is one of the “most decorated and distinguished units” in the Marine Corps. It is an integral part of America’s “force-in-readiness that has historically been first to the fight whenever conflict arises,” the website reads. The battalion is stationed at Camp Pendleton near Oceanside.

Grayson served his first fleet tour at 1st Battalion, 3d Marines, where he served as commander of a rifle platoon, weapons platoon and a Combined Anti-Armor Platoon, according to the Marines website.

In 2015, Lt. Col. Grayson served as the executive officer of Battalion Landing Team 2/1 on the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, followed by service as the operations officer for Fifth Marine Regiment and Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force-Crisis Response-Central Command, respectively.

His deployments include a platoon security detachment deployment, a deployment to Okinawa that included three months as a ship security detachment commander in the Persian Gulf, and a ten month Marine Expeditionary Unit deployment that included combat operations in Iraq.